Unplanned success
RUNNING a catering company was something 50-year-old Iva Tabua never saw herself doing.
Ms Tabua, who hails from Vutia in Rewa, owns Coogee Delights, a brand that is closely associated with home-cooked meals.
The idea of Cogee Delights came about in 2019 while Ms Tabua was living in Australia, helping out her son who was enrolled in a Bachelor of Nursing program at the University of Technology Sydney.
“The name Coogee is based on the city that I was living in Australia, Southern Coogee,” she said.
“You see, at this point, my son had two years of school left and I needed to find ways to fund his education.”
Ms Tabua said she was inspired by how the people in Sydney were very much into healthy foods and using delivery services to get their food. She thought to herself she could do something like that when she returned to Fiji.
“I started off with five food packs a day, then it increased, thanks to advertising on Facebook.
“Soon, our average increased to 60 food packs a day and it came to a point where I was asked if we’d consider full-time catering.”
Ms Tabua said when she went into the advertising aspect of her business, she used her personal page to start things off, then she shifted to creating a separate Facebook page for her catering company and advertising.
“I usually upload three menus a day, one is vegetarian, one is meat-based and the last is keto-based,” she said.
“The difference between my meals and other people’s meals is that we don’t use vetsin. We only use chicken stock and beef stock with vegetables such as capsicums, carrots and celery.”
Ms Tabua said she’s received both good and negative feedback about her meals and services, and she uses the feedback to improve her services.
She tries not to take the negative feedback personally because “people will always want to put you down, no matter how well you do in life”.
Even after she had financially helped her son finish his nursing education and obtain his degree in 2021, her business has kept growing.
For instance, last year when she was asked by the Fiji Rugby Union to cater for the Flying Fijians’ training camp at Welagi on Taveuni, Ms Tabua travelled there with 18 of her team members.
“We cooked all three meals— breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she says.
“The challenge I faced was that it was something I had never done, as I usually cater to the general public, but here we were catering to the national team with their particular diets.
“I started from just a kitchen lady in the kitchen looking after my family to cooking for the national team in terms of their diet.”
Ms Tabua said it was an experience she will never forget.
“It’s just God’s calling. We just make our plans, but God’s plan is first.”